comparison between England and Ethiopia spans world
inequality. The reason Ethiopia is where it is today is that,
unlike in England, in Ethiopia absolutism persisted until the
recent past. With absolutism came extractive economic
institutions and poverty for the mass of Ethiopians, though
of course the emperors and nobility benefited hugely. But
the most enduring implication of the absolutism was that
Ethiopian society failed to take advantage of
industrialization opportunities during the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, underpinning the abject poverty of
its citizens today.
T HE C HILDREN OF S AMAALE
Absolutist political institutions around the world impeded
industrialization either indirectly, in the way they organized
the economy, or directly, as we have seen in Austria-
Hungary and Russia. But absolutism was not the only
barrier to the emergence of inclusive economic institutions.
At the dawn of the nineteenth century, many parts of the
world, especially in Africa, lacked a state that could provide
even a minimal degree of law and order, which is a
prerequisite for having a modern economy. There was not
the equivalent of Peter the Great in Russia starting the
process of political centralization and then forging Russian
absolutism, let alone that of the Tudors in England
centralizing the state without fully destroying—or, more
appropriately, without fully being able to destroy—the
Parliament and other constraints on their power. Without
some degree of political centralization, even if the elites of
these African polities had wished to greet industrialization
with open arms, there wouldn’t have been much they could
have done.
Somalia, situated in the Horn of Africa, illustrates the
devastating effects of lack of political centralization.
Somalia has been dominated historically by people
organized into six clan families. The four largest of these,
the Dir, Darod, Isaq, and Hawiye, all trace their ancestry
back to a mythical ancestor, Samaale. These clan families
originated in the north of Somalia and gradually spread
south and east, and are even today primarily pastoral
people who migrate with their flocks of goats, sheep, and